Production companies are devided into two distinct groups, Major companies and Independent companies. They are responsible for funding the films and productions, they handle budgeting, scheduling, casting, resources, staff, distibution, marketing. This gives them a huge amount of contol over the production and the direction in which it will go. 

 

Major production companies include Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Paramount pictures. These are large companies that have large budgets that allow them to hire big name actors, film in exotic places and deploy huge and in depth marketing strategies. This makes the movies far more well known and popular and gaining large amounts of profit. There are very few of these major companies, meaning they have an oligpoly over the market and have a very large market share each. 

 

Independent production companies include Grassroots Films, Twisted Eye Pix and Campus Studios. These are much smaller companies managing on very small budgets compared to the major companies. This means that the films usually feature less or completely unknown actors, are marketed very sparingly and end up being far less popular than a major companies film. Although the films may end up making less profit and have a much smaller market share, often the percentage profit will be higher than a major company as they have spant far less money in production.